IGHS35 - Interview with Faron Lyons

Jim Merrifield (00:00.806)
Well, hello and welcome to the InfoGov Hot Seat. I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is Faron Lyons at BlackBerry. Welcome, Faron

Faron Lyons (00:08.766)
Hey, hey, thanks for having me, Jim.

Jim Merrifield (00:10.726)
Yeah, it's great to have you. I know we've known each other for quite a while, but I'm interested in telling the world a little more about Faron Lyons and what you're doing at BlackBerry and the legal industry in general. So let's get into this a little bit. Can you tell us a brief introduction of yourself, your role, your current role, and one fun fact about yourself? And if you've watched my episodes, don't forget the fun fact, because I'll just keep asking you that question.

Faron Lyons (00:38.526)
We won't forget that one at all. I have put some thought into that one. So, Farron Lyons, I am at Blackberry as an account manager on the sales side over here. And the seven years in October, I've been with Blackberry and came into the position as a reseller.

So I was reselling a solution that was WatchDocs at the time, that was digital rights management and came across that technology on a project for one of the studios here in Los Angeles. And it just turned my head, right? I thought it was super cool. So brought on the Zia guys as resellers for that tech and made some deals. And that's when BlackBerry acquired the WatchDocs company. And I thought, what the heck are these guys up to?

And so that was my path in. After making a few deals, they offered me a position for a territory manager down here in SoCal. Interesting thing about me, I think I gave my nephew one of the coolest grad presents ever. We were down, it was probably 2015, maybe 2016, and we were up in Portland and I hadn't bought any Bitcoin yet. I had been watching it for a while.

And so I decided to get him some Bitcoin for his graduation. So we took the whole fam and we went to a McDonald's, East Portland, and I had a few hundred bucks. And we actually met a guy who was selling Bitcoin. I had a wallet and we were actually in person. Here's some cash. And the phones were sinking and handshaking and my sister -in -law is going.

Farron, what are we doing? This is totally sketch. It feels like a drug deal. What the heck is going on here? And we're just licking on our ice cream, right? And then the guy's like, okay, we're done. And I thought, wait a second, it's still handshaking, whatever. And he's like, you're fine, you're fine. So that was a half a Bitcoin for a few hundred bucks back in the day. So I ended up giving my nephew half of that and we walked away, right?

Faron Lyons (02:49.502)
Bitcoin's worth 60 grand today. So we're both holding on to it and playing around. And every time I talk to him, like, yeah, it's high five.

Jim Merrifield (03:00.518)
That's awesome. So you're still hung on to it.

Faron Lyons (03:02.974)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's an interesting ride, right? And just to kind of see where it goes and have a little bit of skin in the game and yeah, in a non -track wallet for cash, right? I don't know how many people are watching this one and attorneys and stuff like that out there, but I haven't sold it.

Jim Merrifield (03:23.974)
That's awesome. So you're in it for the long haul and speaking of long haul, so you you've been in this space, the technology space, the legal industry as a whole for quite a while. What made you decide to get into this industry?

Faron Lyons (03:39.998)
You know, like a lot of us, especially in the ARMA of, you know, records management, InfoGov, it's been kind of by accident or luck. And that's kind of where it started. I was doing some technology project management and a buddy was at OpenText and brought me in over there. And so that was right, E -Docs and document management, records management.

Since then, it's been 20 plus years of working in the IG space and talking about solutions there.

Jim Merrifield (04:14.95)
I can't believe, so you've been in the, yeah, we've been in this space for probably almost the same time, 20 years. That's amazing. It's like, it's like from birth, you know?

Faron Lyons (04:20.798)
Yeah, it is pretty amazing, right? It flies by, it certainly does.

Jim Merrifield (04:26.982)
Yeah, that's awesome. Now you mentioned to me recently that you've done a lot of research and talking about DRM and DLP. Can you tell us what you've learned so far and what you're seeing in the space?

Faron Lyons (04:39.486)
Yeah, yeah. And I recently kind of touched on this of data protection and data security at an ISACA conference and just thinking about data protection and what are the components of it and really classification being at the core, right? Coming back to what Arma is all about of just kind of knowing what you've got. And from the cyber side of things, reducing that attack surface and knowing where the sprawl is and kind of managing.

where your data is all the time. And I look at the DLP technologies as kind of the legislator of all of that, right? Here's your policies. Here are the laws around where this data can flow and who can touch it. And DRM being the sheriff, somebody's got to actually enforce that stuff and not just report on it. And I think that that...

Classification is certainly being a fast moving place with AI and the tools we've got out there, but there's a lot of space where we have to move in the DRM space of really protecting our content from the point of instantiation or creation and not waiting for it to become a record, but understanding how it moves and being proactive about keeping it safe and protected.

Jim Merrifield (05:59.91)
Yeah, I think that's an excellent thought. So is there anything else you'd like to share as a final thought with the audience? I'm hoping that you could tell us when that BlackBerry stock's gonna start going up.

Faron Lyons (06:00.51)
I think that's the right one.

Faron Lyons (06:11.806)
From your lips, man, I would love to see that one. I'm doing what I can, right? And that's kind of like my early mover too often, stocks and hydrogen and all this kind of stuff. DRM really going to take off. And that's what I thought back in 2013 and 2014, you know, where we've been there with the entertainment world.

and the MP3s and the movies and stuff like that. And the entertainment world has really gotten a hold on it. Whereas the rest of the world, especially in business, have been kind of hesitant to use those tools to manage information more tightly. But I don't know if that's hope or if it's just kind of timing. I really see that that's the space where we have to make a real impact.

on some of these breaches, exfiltrations, and the data that gets out there. There's examples all over the place, Panama Papers being a pretty famous one there of file shares just getting out, and that's super damaging information. That stuff doesn't have to happen. We can hit the stop button on that stuff and manage it more closely. So that's really, I think, you know,

What I came on today really to chat about and underline a little bit of a place where we can make some real impact without impacting users negatively either, right? It doesn't have to be that.

Jim Merrifield (07:45.158)
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, this stuff has to happen behind the scenes because putting more pressure on users to actually do something, I mean, we're still struggling with getting users to, you know, in the legal world with getting our users to file emails, right? Never mind, you know, the other sorts of things. So, now thank you so much, Faron for spending some time with us. I know you're getting ready to go on vacation, so enjoy that time with your family and, you know, thanks for.

Faron Lyons (08:00.894)
Yeah.

Jim Merrifield (08:14.63)
for joining us on the InfoGov Hot Seat. If you'd like to be a guest on the Hot Seat like Farron here, all you have to do is log on our website, infogovhotseat .com and fill out the form. We'll get you on the schedule. And thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.

Faron Lyons (08:30.974)
Thanks, Jim.